


Son of My Heart

by indevan



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bits and pieces of Theron Mahariel's Origin with emphasis on his relationship with Ashalle</p>
            </blockquote>





	Son of My Heart

Ashalle could feel winter coming as she brought the pot out for dinner.  The sun was barely behind the treeline and already there was a chill in the air.  She carried the pot to the firepit and hung it on the spit.  She reached into her pocket and pulled the flint she kept there.

Once the fire was going, she sighed and leaned back on her knees.  It was approaching night and still Theron and Tamlen weren’t back.  She hoped that they weren’t goofing off in the forest somewhere--they were in trouble enough for brawling last week.  She could picture him now, coming from the forest, dragging his feet on the dirt--shoulders slumped, face drawn in and bruised and looking far younger than his nineteen years.  Ashalle sighed and her mind catapulted forward to whatever punishment she was going to have to give him for dallying in the woods yet again.

“Shemlen!”

The cry came from the far end of camp.  It sounded like Fenarel--his voice still cracked when he shouted.  Ashalle got to her feet and dusted dirt from her knees.  A shem approaching their camp was never a good thing, no matter what their intentions were.  Still, best to just go back into her aravel and wait for him to pass by.  She shoveled dirt into her hands to put out the flame but stopped when she heard someone running up behind her, their feet tapping out a frantic rhythm on the ground.

She turned and looked up to see a very frightened Merrill had come to find her.

“Ashalle--you have to come!”

She frowned. “Come where?"

“To see the human.” Merrill’s eyes were somehow even larger as she stood in front of her, thin chest heaving up and down. “He...”

She stopped to catch her breath--the Keeper’s First was not trained like their hunters to run fast and long like the Halla.  Ashalle dropped the dirt and put a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“I’ll go see him.”

She got to her feet and made her way to the center of camp where the shem was speaking to Keeper Marethari.  He was dressed oddly, she thought--in a long robe and a breastplate.  A long sword and dagger were sheathed on his back but the sight of them still gave her pause.  What gave her one even longer was the figure he had slung over his shoulder.  Ashalle didn’t have to look at the armor to know that it was one of their own--she simply saw the hair.  A long curtain of silken black hair hanging down and loose over the elf’s face.  She quickened her step and ran to where the shemlen stood.

“Theron!” she cried.

She reached the son of her heart where he lay unconscious and slumped over this interloper’s shoulder.

“Ashalle,” Keeper Marethari said in her calm, quiet voice. “This is Duncan of the Grey Wardens.  He...he found Theron outside a cave in the forest and brought him back here.  He believes that he’s very ill.”

Ill.  She was used to Theron being ill.  This seemed more final, though, than the fevers that plagued him as a child.

“I will do my best to heal him,” she continued. “Do not worry.”

“You are his mother?” Duncan asked, not unkindly.

Ashalle lowered her head and replied, “No.”

\--

Ashalle had never been inside the Keeper’s aravel--at least not since Marethari became Keeper.  When Theron--the first Theron--was the First, he allowed her inside where they would play stones and later the day after he first became Keeper and she helped him redecorate.  He was a young Keeper since they hadn’t an elf born with magic in their Clan for decades and so the Keeper before him was very old.  Theron had become Keeper before he turned twenty.

There were sketches of the old Keepers against the wall, Theron among them.  Ashalle’s heart clenched when she saw her old friend’s portrait.  Hair bound up on the top of his head in a horsetail that fell to the small of his back.  Wide, welcoming smile.  Theron--her Theron, though the Clan often reminded her that it wasn’t so--looked so much like him.  The same black hair and sage-colored eyes.  The same smile.  His other features, the ones that made others stare at him hungrily (she, of course, noticed the stares because he was her baby) came from his mother.  Ashalle had been knocked down when she saw her at the Gathering of the Clans.  She had been so beautiful that she nearly had to look away.

Theron was stretched out on a bedroll.  His face was scrunched in pain and, even in the dim light of the Keeper’s leddas candles, she could see the sweat glistening on his skin.

“What is it?” she asked the Keeper tentatively.

“I do not know,” was her only answer. “It is something powerful...powerful and dark.”

“Do you think you can cure him?”

This time, Marethari didn’t answer right away.  Ashalle wondered if perhaps she hadn’t heard her but then the answer came.

“I do not know.”

Tears came, then.  Sudden but not surprising.  Ashalle dabbed her eyes with her fingers but the flow did not stop.  Theron, her sweet Theron.  She would not know what to do if she had to imagine life without him.  No more exasperated sighs for fighting or wasting time.  No more chastising him for eating well after he was full just to eat since they could have saved that food for another meal.  No more making him his favorite willow bark tea when he was ill--though he always denied his sickness.  No more braiding that beautiful silken hair as he wriggled and whined and said he was no longer a child.

“Keeper,” she ventured, “I know he is not my own--others remind me of it often enough--but it feels as though he is.  Here.”

She tapped her heart and sniffled through her tears.

“I know, lethallan.” Marethari’s gaze was still but pinched with worry.

“Is there nothing more you can do?”

“I can pray.”

\--

Birds were chirping somewhere.  Muffled and outside but birds, they were.  He could hear the grunts of Halla in the distance.  The low, unintelligible murmurs of others talking.  His head ached dully and, when he drew in a breath, he found his nose clogged.  He sat up and frowned at his own health.  An autumn cold.  Typical.  He thought he had left the illnesses of his youth behind with his fledgling’s smock.

Theron yawned and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes to get the last of sleep from them.  He lowered his hands and paused.  This wasn’t the aravel he and Ashalle shared.  There were scrolls scattered on the floor and the twisted, crooked staff of the Keeper leaned against the wall.  What was he doing in the Keeper’s aravel?

Slowly, memories filtered back in.  The Shemlen, the cave...Tamlen.

“Tamlen!” he exclaimed and his voice cracked from disuse.

He started to scramble to his feet but got tangled in his own hair.  Theron paused and disengaged himself from the long, messy strands.  He pulled it over his shoulder and quickly braided it.

He got up and left the aravel.  Immediately, he stumbled back and closed his eyes against the bright sun.

“Lethallin!”

Blinking against the purple spots in his vision, Theron turned at the voice.  He saw Fenarel striding towards him, arm lifted in a wave.

“Thank the Creators you woke up.  We were all worried.”

Theron yawned and pressed the heel of his hand against his temple.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Two days.”

“Two _days_?!”

Fenarel gave a helpless shrug.

“You were very sick.”

“Sick?”

He sniffled through his stuffed nose, angry at the reminder.

“Yeah, you were unconscious when that Shemlen brought you back to camp.  Ineria said that she heard Keeper Marethari nearly exhausted her magic curing you.”

Theron blinked at him, trying to process what he was just told.  He was unconscious for two days?  Even his worst fevers as a child didn’t hold him so completely to where he never surfaced into consciousness at all.

“Wait...a Shemlen?” He twisted his mouth a little and added, “Tamlen and I killed some Shemlen in the woods.”

“What?” He sighed, “I guess the Keeper will have to talk to you about that later but this Shemlen was a Grey Warden.”

Theron put the words together in his head: Grey Warden.  Hahren Paivel had told them stories on occasion involving the Grey Wardens.

“A Grey Warden?  Really?”

Fenarel nodded. “Yeah.  He came in out of the forest with you on his shoulder.  He dropped you off with the Keeper and Ashalle and then went back to where he found you to ‘investigate.’”

“Ashalle?”

He winced at the thought of upsetting her.  He’d done it often enough that he wondered why Ashalle didn’t simply hand her custodian duties off to someone else.

“She’s down in the pit,” Fenarel said, referring to the sunken part of land in their more recent settlement.

“I should speak to her...” He bit his lip.

Fenarel waved a hand and said, “The Keeper wants to speak with you, too.  So does Paivel.”

Theron dreaded speaking to the Hahren.  He so often was in trouble for goofing off during his lessons as a child.

“Talk to the Hahren.  I’ll tell the Keeper you’re awake.”

He nodded to his Clan-mate.  Fenarel lingered for that extra moment, a strange expression on his face.  Theron could maybe explain it: before he and Tamlen came together, he and Fenarel had dallied once or twice.  He made his way over to the communal firepit where Paivel was reciting some of his lessons to fledgelings.  At his approach, the older elf turned and regarded him.

“It is good to see you well, da’len.” Somehow even the well-wishing sounded like a scold.

Theron squared his shoulders to accept the inevitable.

“What were you two thinking?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes.

He sighed.  There it was.

“We just wanted to see what was in the cave,” he snapped back, hating how petulant he sounded.

“And you were both too curious to come back to tell the Clan?”

“We wanted to see if there was anything to report!  Lay off!”

Paivel shook his head.

“This is why you are still considered da’len.”

Theron sighed in exasperation. “Why did you want to speak to me, Hahren?  If you were just going to deride me?”

“You have been getting into trouble since you could walk, Theron Mahariel.  If we do not scold you, we surrender the notion that one day you will actually _learn_ from your mistakes.”

He rolled his eyes.  He wondered why he had even come to speak to him since he knew that this was what he was going to get.

“Hmph.”

Paivel reached out and put both hands on his shoulders, steering him to face the fledgelings.

“Now, why don’t you join me in recounting to these children the Fall of the Dales.”

“I’d love to, Hahren, but the Keeper needs to see me and Tamlen--”

“Children!” Paivel’s booming voice cut him off. “Come listen to one of our hunters recount the Fall of the Dales.”

He glowered at the elder, feeling rather foolish being put on the spot.

“Uh...” Theron looked at the children eagerly turning their faces up to him. “So.  When two elves with certain kinds of--”

Paivel cleared his throat to interject and stepped forward to complete the tale.  Theron placed his hands behind his back and smiled cheekily.

“We are the Dalish: keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path.”

“We are the last of the elvhenan, and never again shall we submit,” Theron finished.

The Hahren turned to him, a look of surprise on his face.

“The oath of the Dales and no smart-mouthed comment.  I’m impressed.” Paivel tugged on a lock of his hair.  And then his face turned grave. “Go see the Keeper and find Tamlen, da’len.”

Theron nodded his head and touched the tips of his fingers to his chest.

\--

If he stayed, he would die.  Ashalle continuously told herself that as she watched him pack his things.  Theron’s face was schooled in a scowl.

“I want to stay,” he said into his belongings.

“Da’assan...”

She came up behind him and squeezed his shoulders gently.

“I wish you could,” she finished.

Theron turned around and, surprising her, he pulled her into a hug.  She hugged him back, fearing that this would be the last time she would hold him.  She could see the chord of his father’s necklace where it went under his armor and it brought a small smile to her face.

“Ma’arlath, da’assan,” she said and quietly added, “the son of my heart.”

“Ma’arlath,” he repeated and his voice caught on the end of the word.

Ashalle at first believed it was because no one was looking but she knew it was because, deep down, he was scared.  Scared of what held him and scared for Tamlen.  Scared for what awaited him in the south.

She kissed him gently on the forehead.  He was still running a bit of a fever.  He kissed her cheek and let go to take his bag and his bow with him.

Ashalle trailed behind him as he walked up the slope leading from camp.  She watched him comfort a crying Merrill and playfully punch Fenarel on the arm one last time.  She watched him shoulder his bag and looked out over them all, smiling his easy smile, strained though it was.  What she couldn’t do was watch him leave.


End file.
